by Leon Loy
“Blazes, Joe,” Buck said, “Hold onto her.”
“She’s harder to hold than a scalded pig,” Joe said. “Grab her legs.”
Buck absorbed a few sharp kicks before he could wrap his arms around her legs.
His brother Harold rode up with the horses.
“Come tie her legs, Harold,” Buck said. “We’ll have to throw her over the saddle. She ain’t going to cooperate.”
“Why don’t you just conk her on the head, Buck,” Harold said, climbing down from his horse. He was a couple of years younger than Buck, but had the same sandy colored hair and brown eyes.
“’Cause I don’t want to damage the goods, brother,” Buck said.
Harold took a short rope and began wrapping it around her ankles. In less than a minute, they had tied Sparrow, belly down, over the saddle of one of the horses. She was still struggling against her binds, making the horse nervous. Harold grasped the horse’s reins to steady it.
“I hope she’s worth all this trouble,” he said.
“This breed’s a rare fruit, and you don’t mash rare fruit. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
As they mounted their horses, Harold scoffed, and said, “You aim to share this rare fruit?”
Buck took the reins to Sparrow’s horse from his brother.
“I ain’t got it all worked out yet. You keep your hands off her till I do.”
They rode past the little rent house and out of town.
The jostling ride required all of Sparrow’s strength to balance on the saddle, even though she was secured with rope. Her stomach felt as though it was being punched with every stride, and her head began to ache, blood pounding in her temple. For what seemed like hours, they rode on into the night.
Just when she thought she could stand it no longer, the horse slowed to a jolting walk, and then stopped. It was so dark she could not even see the horse. Hands pulled at her ropes, and she was set on her feet on the ground. She collapsed, unable to stand.
“I’ll take that out of your mouth if you’ll behave,” Buck said, kneeling beside her.
He pulled the bandana out of her mouth. She was panting heavily, her diaphragm contracting in spasms. She couldn’t have yelled if she wanted to. At this point, she knew yelling would not help. Wherever they had taken her, it was surely many miles from Dodge City.
“You gonna behave?” he asked, poking her with the toe of his boot. She nodded.
“That’s my girl,” he said.
She sat up, wincing from the soreness in her abdomen and ribs. “I am not your girl,” she gasped.
He laughed and walked away, his boots swishing in the grass.
They appeared to be on the open prairie. She could see stars near the horizon in every direction. Joe was striking a flint to make fire. She could see his face in the flashes of blue and yellow sparks. He soon had a blaze going, and Harold began throwing sticks on the ground near him for the fire.
In a few minutes, Buck returned, dropped a saddle to the ground nearby, and rolled out a blanket. In the growing firelight, she could see him on his blanket, watching her.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Far enough, your doctor friend won’t find you,” he said. “I expect he will try, when he comes to. He will probably get them marshals after us. But they won’t find you.”
“Caleb will find you,” she said. The rough ride had rattled the fear out of her. Fear had kept her from escaping captivity once before. She resolved, never again.
“Not till I’m ready for him,” Buck said. “I expect that doctor friend of yours would put up some good money to get you back, even if that clerk husband of your’n don’t. Maybe Charlie Rath will pitch in. We’ll see what you’re worth to them.”
Her mind worked this over. “You took me for money?”
“We’ll see. If they don’t pay, I’ll just make you my girl. Would you like that…be my woman?”
A wave of nausea washed over her. Despite her resolve, the fear crept back.
8
Caleb waited until nearly midnight, and then slipped out of his room with his gun belt buckled around his waist. Rath’s ten-gauge shotgun was in one hand, and his boots in the other.
Downstairs, he walked past the desk, which was empty, and across the lobby to the front doors. He found them locked, so he walked softly down the hall to the kitchen. The red-haired cook was sitting at a small table watching a skinny Mexican man mop the floor boards. As he expected, there was an outside door, which was open.
“Well, look who it is, Miguel,” the cook said when she saw Caleb. “Mr. Manners himself.” The Mexican cast a disinterested glance at Caleb and kept mopping.
“Ain’t nothing left to eat, honey,” she said. “They ate all that venison roast, rare as it was.”
“I had more than plenty,” Caleb said. “I was headed out for a drink. The front doors are locked.”
“You can use this door. It stays unlocked. Don’t put them boots on until you get outside.”
Caleb walked to the door, trying to avoid Miguel’s mop, and paused. “Do you know where O’Riley’s place is?”
She cocked her head, giving him a sideward look. “O’Riley’s place? I didn’t figure you for that kind of degenerate.”
“Well, you never really know people, do you?” he said.
She scoffed. “No, Sir, you sure don’t. If you’re into that sort of thing, follow Griffin Avenue to the river. There’s a path on the right that leads through the cottonwoods to a log cabin and a row of shacks. That’s where that Irish bastard keeps those poor girls.”
“Thank you,” he said, slipping out the door.
As he was stepping into his boots, he heard her say to Miguel, “I hope that Arkansas tramp gets the crabs.”
O’Riley closed the cribs at midnight, much to the ire of the two drovers who were with his girls. The drovers complained at having to finish their business so early. O’Riley said they’d been in there long enough to go twice. He and Eb stood at the doors of the cribs while they dressed.
The one with Ruthie complained. “I reckon a partial refund is in order. We was just getting started good.”
O’Riley grabbed him by the neck, and shoved him to his knees. He took Ruthie by the arm and pulled her to him. Then he shoved the drover’s face into her crotch. She started to back away, but the look O’Riley shot her made her freeze.
“You have thirty seconds. Get your money’s worth,” he said to the drover.
Later he put the three whores, Rachel, Ruthie, and Salina into the same crib for the night, as usual, and had Eb lock them in.
After O’Riley had gone to his room and everything was batted down for the night, Eb settled onto his straw mattress in the back room of the log cabin. He had almost drifted off to sleep when the crickets stopped chirping. He sat up and listened.
Through the one small window in the room, he thought he heard something move. He felt it more than heard it. He craned his neck, listening. There it was again; the patter of bare feet on hard dirt, and a flourish of excited whispering.
“Those damn whores have gotten loose,” he muttered to himself, jumping up and pulling on his trousers. “There ain’t a woman born that can run fast enough to get away from me.”
The bullwhip lay wrapped on the back of a chair against the wall. He seldom got to use it on the whores because O’Riley didn’t want them marked up. Eb resented the fact that O’Riley got to mark up the girls whenever he wanted to—cutting them with razors was one of his favorite amusements—but he wasn’t allowed to do more than slap them around some.
Eb took the bullwhip and tiptoed through the cabin, halting outside O’Riley’s door, listening. The Irishman’s snores sounded like a crosscut saw on a sappy pine. That was good, Eb told himself. He would catch the whores, take them down to the river and beat the living hell
out of them. Surely, O’Riley would appreciate his capture of the girls, and overlook any severe punishment he exacted on them. He nearly peed himself with the anticipation.
Eb worked his way quietly around the outside of the cabin to the shack where he had locked the three women. Even in the dark he could see the door was open. A quick look inside confirmed his suspicion. They were gone.
Hurrying now, he ran around the cabin. Ahead of him he heard footsteps on the hard dirt out in the yard. In the moonlight, he caught a glimpse of one of the whores running through the cottonwoods. It was Rachel.
He started after her, when the metallic click of a hammer being cocked on a gun froze him in his tracks.
“That’s as far as you go, O’Riley,” a man said.
Eb could not see the man in the dark, but a ray of moonlight lit the barrel of a shotgun not a foot from his face.
“I ain’t O’Riley,” he said.
“Then who are you?” Caleb asked.
“Did you let them whores out?” Eb said, watching the path in the cottonwoods where he had caught view of them. “They’ll be all the way to town in a minute or two.”
“Good. If you are not O’Riley, then who are you?”
Eb realized it wouldn’t be smart to admit he worked for the Irishman. “I was in with one of them whores when O’Riley kicked me out. I fell asleep under a tree.”
“That’s a lie. I saw you come out of that cabin just now. I say you are O’Riley.”
“No, mister, I am not O’Riley,” Eb said. “That ain’t a lie. I was in that cabin looking for whiskey. O’Riley is asleep in there, snoring like a grizzly. I ain’t got nothing to do with him. That’s the truth.”
“What have you got to do with those girls?”
“Just fornicatin’ is all. That’s what they’re here for, ain’t it?”
“You say O’Riley is in the cabin?”
“Yes, Sir. He’s in there alright.”
Caleb pushed the muzzle of the shotgun into the man’s side. “We’ll go take a look. You lead the way.”
Eb went to the cabin door and stopped. “Mister, you really don’t want to go in there. He’ll kill us both.” He felt the shotgun press deeper into his side, forcing him forward.
The door squeaked slightly as they entered the main room of the cabin. It was nearly pitch black inside, with only a single pale beam of moonlight coming in through a window. A man’s snores could be heard in a nearby room. Caleb kept Eb moving toward the room until they were both through the door.
“You, in the bed,” Caleb said loudly. “Get up.”
The snoring ended in a gruff snort, and O’Riley sat up, peering into the darkness. “Is that you, Eb?” Eb turned to run, but Caleb blocked his way and shoved him toward the bed.
“Who is it?” O’Riley said, “Answer me, or by God I’ll shoot you.”
“I wouldn’t. I’ve got a shotgun on you,” Caleb warned.
“Who are you?”
“Caleb Thomason.”
“I don’t know you.”
“No, but you knew my wife.”
O’Riley rolled off the edge of the bed in a desperate effort to reach his revolver on the washstand. His heavy bulk landed with a thump on the floor boards. He scrambled to his knees and made a go for the washstand, but Caleb was there first. The big man felt the cold muzzle of the shotgun against his forehead, stopping him.
“Make some light,” Caleb said to Eb, who commenced to stir around in the dark to find the lantern O’Riley kept hung on a nail in the wall.
While Eb was finding matches and lighting the lamp, O’Riley said, “Can I get off the floor?”
“No. You stay right there,” Caleb said.
The lantern was lit, and in the swell of its yellow light, Caleb got his first look at the man who had enslaved and brutalized Sparrow. On all fours, O’Riley’s naked form appeared like an enormous, hairless boar. Sprouting around the ears of his large bald head were thin strands of reddish blonde hair. Beneath the barrel of the shotgun, he glared at Caleb with pale gray eyes which held not a single hint of fear. The one he called, Eb, on the other hand was trembling.
“Eb, I’ll kill you for this,” O’Riley threatened.
“You won’t be killing anybody,” Caleb said. “Eb, sit on the bed. Over here, where I can see you.” Eb obeyed, staying as far from O’Riley as he could.
“Can I cover myself?” O’Riley said.
Caleb thought of saying to him, you came into this world naked, and this is how you will go out, but he didn’t.
“Man, say something,” O’Riley said, breathing heavily with the effort to stay on his hands and knees.
“Listen carefully,” Caleb said. “Do you remember an Indian girl you had here, little over a year ago? She was part white. You had her taken from the Comanche, then sold her to a trader named Lee.”
“I got a bad back, mister. Let me sit on the bed,” O’Riley pleaded.
“Answer my question.”
“Yeah, I remember her. Don’t know what Lee did with her, and don’t care.”
“I found her at the trading post after Lee was killed by Comanche.”
O’Riley grunted. “You come to thank me?”
Caleb shoved the muzzle of the shotgun against the big man’s forehead with such force that O’Riley fell over. A circle of blood appeared where the gun had broken the flesh. “I have come to end all of this,” he said. “Is he with you?”
“The little shit works for me, yeah.”
Caleb looked at the trembling man on the bed. “Get on the floor,” he said.
“What?” Eb asked.
“Get down here beside him.”
“What for?”
Caleb shot him a look which gave him all the answer he needed. He got on the floor beside O’Riley, who made an attempt to grab hold of him.
“Don’t touch him,” Caleb said.
“He would have shot me,” Eb explained to the fat man beside him. “He made me show where you was.”
O’Riley spit on him.
“What did you pay for her?” Caleb said.
“For who, that Indian girl?” O’Riley said. “Ten gold Eagles, if I remember. Most I ever paid for a bit of meat. She was pretty, but she didn’t turn out so good as a whore, so I sold her to that old trader.”
Caleb brought the barrel of the shotgun down on O’Riley’s head with such force that it opened a gash on his head. Blood splattered on Eb, who frantically wiped it away from his face with both hands.
“She is no whore,” Caleb said. “She is a woman. A human being. Her name is Sparrow, and she is my wife. You enslaved her, beat her, and forced her to prostitute herself. That makes you about the lowest form of life on this earth.”
O’Riley groaned from the wound on his head, but he hadn’t lost his wits. “So you say. She’s alive, ain’t she? If it wasn’t for me, she’d be a squaw in some Comanche’s lodge.”
“I just feed those women, Mr. Thomason,” Eb said nervously. “I never laid a hand on ’em.”
“You lying little shit,” O’Riley growled, “You think I don’t know what you been doing to them girls?”
Caleb turned his gaze toward Eb. “You do anything to Sparrow?”
Eb held his hands up, and said, “Listen, I wasn’t here, then. That’s God’s truth.”
“This all ends here, now,” Caleb said.
Looking around the room, he saw Eb’s bullwhip where he had dropped it on the floor. He kicked it toward Eb, and said, “Tie his feet and hands together with that.”
Eb wrapped the whip around O’Riley’s ankles, then pulled his hands down and tied the ends of it around his wrists.
“Eb, I swear, I will gut you for this,” O’Riley threatened. He rolled to his side and let go a stream of piss on the little man.
“You f
at bastard!” Eb screeched, scrambling away. “I hope he kills you.”
With the shotgun still pointed at them, Caleb backed up to the wall and took the lantern off its nail.
“What are you going to do with that?” O’Riley asked.
To Eb, Caleb said, “You had nothing to do with my wife. Get out of here. If you touch one of those women, or I ever see you again, I will cut you in half.”
Eb turned and ran out of the room. He didn’t stop to collect any of his belongings from the back room but ran as fast as he could to O’Riley’s small stable, and his horse. A minute later he had crossed the river and was headed north; barefoot, hatless, and stinking of piss.
He never looked back.
The cook eyed Caleb suspiciously when he took a seat in the hotel dining room at breakfast. It was late in the morning, and the other guests had come and gone. She set a plate of fried eggs and bacon down in front of him and said, “I suppose certain late-night excursions generate healthy appetites. Was your visit at you-know-where to your satisfaction?”
He started to tell her to mind her own business, then checked himself. “It worked out,” was all he said.
“Hmm! I just bet it did,” she retorted. “O’Riley’s place caught fire last night and burned down; with O’Riley in it. Those shacks he kept whores in was burned down to the ground, too. They didn’t find no other bodies, so the girls must have got away.”
Caleb started cutting his eggs into bites with his fork.
She squinted, trying to read his face. “Mister, I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing in the Flat, but if you are the one burned down O’Riley, there’s a few more places in town that need burning down. If you want a list…”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am,” he said, forking a bite of egg. “Keep your list.”
The cook gave him another long, squinty look, and spun around to go to the kitchen. “I hope you’ll be staying around a while,” she said over her shoulder. “It might get interesting.”
Caleb had no intentions of burning anyone, or anything else while he was in Fort Griffin. His mission to vindicate Sparrow’s treatment by O’Riley was accomplished. His plan was to camp nearby to wait for Charles Rath, and avoid lingering in town. Someone else was likely to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer.
